Can money buy transformation in Newark schools?

View full sizeMatt Rainey/The Star-LedgerThe halls and main Atrium of Central High School, in a 2009 file photo. Central High is among 12 New Jersey schools with proposals for reform that were approved for federal grants.

Five Newark schools are getting $21.9 million of the $45 million in School Improvement Grants that the federal government is sending to New Jersey. The money goes to those with worthy plans for rehabilitating schools that year after year after year fail to provide most kids with a decent education.

I’m sure a lot of people greeted that news with moans and groans about good money thrown after what’s already been wasted. I’m not yet ready to join the skeptics. I do have questions about just what the money is supposed to buy, particularly since the effort to rehabilitate comes at a time when state education cuts are going to make the job harder.

The grants cover three years and are going to 12 New Jersey schools, including Newark’s Shabazz and Central High schools, Renaissance Academy, an alternative education program, West Kinney Alternative, a vocational school, and Dayton Street Elementary. That comes to a bit more than $1 million a year per school. How far is that going to go?

Depending on the rehabilitation plans, the schools may be required to replace their principals and 50 percent of their teachers. Where are the transforming schools going to find not just different teachers and principals, but better ones? Handing out grants to just a few schools only makes sense if the good they do can then be instilled into other schools. How is that going to work?

I have lots of questions, but for starters, I called Ras Baraka, the councilman-elect of the city’s South Ward, who is also principal of Central High School. Doesn’t Central need a principal without another job? Central’s grant is for “transformation,” a category that is supposed to require replacing the principal. Will that make the question of Baraka’s double duties moot?

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told me. Baraka said the grant application is based on a reform plan that is already in the works, so he comes with it. Baraka argued that as a councilman, he has a better chance of bringing more resources to his kids and looking after some of the issues, whether housing or water bills, that affect his kids’ lives and learning.

“I don’t leave school and go home to sleep,” he said. “I go to meetings. I’m in the community. It is not about jobs, it is about service.”

Central’s transformation plan calls for a “global village zone,” modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone. Central and the elementary schools around it will be organized into a network that shapes the academic experience from preschool through high school, with additional programs to address medical and social needs.

There are good students in the elementary schools that feed into Central, but when those students go to high school, they choose Newark’s magnet schools, Science or University High, charter schools and private schools, Baraka said. Baraka wants to change that.

The state Department of Education’s website says that only 4.6 percents of Central students graduate by passing the state high school exit exam, compared to 89 percent statewide. Baraka said that’s false. Kids get more than one chance to take the exam and better than 50 percent of his pass after more than one try. We agreed that 50 percent is not good.

If people get more than one opportunity to take the SATs or civil service and other tests, why are urban kids being held to a different standard on the high school exam? Baraka said.

Can’t we give our kids the kind of education that avoids the question? I guess that’s what the School Improvement Grants are all about.Among other things, the money will be used for training teachers to better educate difficult learners, immigrant kids and special needs students.

Principals in Central’s proposed zone are supposed to have some autonomy when it comes to picking and choosing teachers to build their faculties. Central, however, just lost about 20 staff to layoffs because of district cuts. Baraka said he has filled some holes and is working on the rest. I suspect the cuts will make faculty-shaping harder.

I’ve always been told building the right faculty is a key to improving any school. I've always wondered: If the improving school succeeds in attracting good teachers, who gets the bad ones?